April 30, 2009

I nearly forgot Poem In Your Pocket Day today. I LOVE poetry. I once thought of myself as a poet (and actually still believe it's latent in me, my poet-ness, waiting for a moment to step out). In the meantime I enjoy any reason to read, share or talk about poetry and its indirect transformational powers. I think we should make congress speak in poetry for a few days and see if more compassion, clarity, and wholeness emerges where hate and vitriol seem to have taken root.

When I started searching for my poem for my pocket today, I had to change my clothes in order to have more pockets. Here are some of my favorites:

maggie and milly and molly and may -- by e.e. cummings

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles,

April 09, 2009

I get some notes and calls asking about the blog every once in awhile. There are many explanations for a 4-month lapse in blog-writing (too many to write about here) but mostly, what initially drove the blog was my feeling of a lack of hope in the world. As strange as it sounds, I felt like hope came back last year--in my life, in the media (well, some places in the media), and in the world. I may have quit writing because there was so much hope out there, I felt redundant.

Lately since my last post about "Yes We Can", I'm excited about vegetables, and I'm still exploring possibilities for my own version of Dave Eggars'826 Valencia to begin next fall to help ease the burden on teachers and schools in my community that are suffering severe financial cutbacks.
Everything I want to do takes a community. I'd like to build a community of HumanKind writers (as you know I can't keep it up on my own :--), I'll be looking for a community of volunteers to implement my writing/tutoring group to support schools. Friends around me are losing loved ones, having illnesses, recovering from illnesses, and there is financial strain and worry everywhere. But, I find there is hope in coming together to solve the not-so-impossible problems if we're together.

There is nothing that cannot be helped by us creating, building, sustaining, and nurturing community in our lives, our regions and our world.
This past week, Karen sent me the Stand By Me video by Playing for Change and I found the wonderful Antwerp Station video on You-Tube. If you enjoy them, share this post with your friends. I hope you're building your own communities around the things you care about.
I'll be back soon. In the meantime, watch and enjoy these two (and, yes, if you feel moved to do so, dance!).

January 02, 2009

I'm falling a little bit in love with the XO every time I boot it up. Last night, I even managed to get online while sitting on the porch at the hotel we're at in Nairobi -- the Sugar interface is making more and more sense to me. And I'm feeling much less nervous about donating it to a school when we get to western Tanzania -- I'll at least be able to show the kids how to get started, and they can take it from there.

The coolest thing I've learned about it so far: Though you need an Internet connection to get online, you don't need one to network with other XOs. Kids can chat with other kids and share documents without getting online. Cool, right? So far I've only read about this; I'll let you know when I actually accomplish the feat.

As for our little projects: We're getting in touch today with the director of the journalism department at the University of Nairobi -- she specializes in a lot of what we're all interested in. Check her out here.

And we're excited to find that there is a Kiva office right here in Nairobi, doing their microfinance thang. They're on the list of places to visit on our way back through Nairobi.

Tomorrow, we start out for Tanzania and Project Zawadi. While we've had plenty of contact with our US contact, we haven't heard back yet from our local contact, Max. If we can't get in touch, Project Malaika is nearby and the people there know how to reach him. Either way, we'll learn some great stuff and, I hope, contribute something worthwhile. Pictures to come.